Looking through the noose

It highlights the Ol’ West credo of an eye-for-an-eye. In one of the movie’s earlier scenes, 14 year old Mattie Ross, as played by Hailee Steinfeld, calmly passes through a crowd viewing the hanging of three men, a chilling but fitting backdrop for the plot and Mattie Ross.

Mattie has arrived in Fort Smith because her father was murdered. Consequently, she has tasks to complete. Determined and capable beyond her years, she handily tackles the first chores which include shipping her father’s body back home. She’s self-determined her last task: avenge her father’s death.

She pays U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to join her in hunting down her father’s killer, Chaney, in the Indian country where he has escaped. She wants Chaney tried and hung fully aware that killing her father has doomed him.

After days of travel filled with scenes of violent gunfire and humorous campfire moments without a sign of Chaney, her father’s killer seems far away. LeBoeuf leaves believing the trail is cold. Yet, in the next moments, Mattie comes face to face with her father’s killer. When her opportunity comes, Mattie decisively shoots him in the chest.

As she desired, Chaney dies aware that murdering her father brought about his own death. However, almost at the same moment, the rebound of Mattie’s rifle propels her into life-threatening and life altering events. She survives because Rooster carried her through treacherous terrain, first on horseback, and then on foot to medical care that amputates her arm.

The movie finishes with scenes of the girl 25 years later. The camera singles out the 39 year old, one-armed, unmarried, and unsmiling Miss Ross. Miss Ross lives with the legacy that she killed a man. She’s no longer the girl who had the quarreling Cogburn and LeBoeuf telling stories around the campfire. After traveling for days to see Rooster again, she learns that the man who saved her life had passed away three days before her arrival.

Probably more than 10 years ago, I was on the fence concerning the death penalty and did not sign Amnesty International letters that involved it. Questioning that the issue should be in the group’s website prompted me to “look through the noose” at its legacy.

Right away I learned from the literature that the legacy is not the reduction of violent crime. 1

Before I pursued the facts, a Northeastern University professor had involved his students in researching death penalty cases, finding that at least one in seven of those sentenced to death were innocent.2 Thus, years before the 2011 execution of Troy Davis, I was ready to sign letters because of the likelihood the condemned might be innocent.

Troy Davis

A memory suggested another consideration. In the late 1980’s, a friend’s husband, a World War II soldier, revealed to me that he had never killed anyone despite carrying and shooting a gun in battle. He explained that he always directed his shots away from enemy soldiers even as bullets came at him. He was obviously happy he never killed a man.

Years later, I learned that Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall had questioned World War II soldiers and stumbled onto similar revelations. The General has commented: “The question is why. … [The answer] is the simple and demonstrable fact that there is within most men an intense resistance to killing their fellow man.” In the book, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman reports on Marshall’s discoveries and his own overview of military history, noting “…there are compelling data that indicate that this singular lack of enthusiasm for killing one’s fellow man has existed throughout military history.” 3.

Yet, we know a percentage of human beings will kill — some in battle and others in police actions, etc. Others will kill unlawfully, that is, murder. When a murdered is convicted, some countries expect their courts to sentence the supposed murderer to death. Consequently, someone must be employed to be the executioner.

Why are individuals willing to conduct court-ordered executions?In the United States, author Ivan Solotaroff found that some executioners like the power to kill while others distance themselves from the killing by focusing on their skill in handling the machinery they utilize. Tellingly, for years, one executioner lied to his wife about what he did for a living. Yet, only two of the executioners admitted to not liking their job. Don Cabana who, as a prison warden executed two men, quit after he witnessed a 15 minute death struggle after administering a lethal injection. Since then, he has spoken and written against the death penalty across the United States.4

Importantly, a special term identifies a PTSD participants in socially accepted killings such as court ordered executions can suffer. In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association named that PTSD: Perpetration Induced Traumatic Stress (PTSI). Researcher and author Rachel MacNair has studied and reported on it in her book. 5

In the early 2000’s and now, two facts shout at me. A fraction of the world’s countries employ the death penalty;6 and, the United States has consistently joined countries known for human rights abuses such as China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia at the top of the list for most executions.7

The number of countries conducting executions continues to shrink as the years pass. The latest facts tell us that 174 of the 193 United Nation’s member countries were execution free in 2012; with Latvia the 97th completely abolitionist country in the world. 6 Also, abolitionism is a pre-condition of membership in the European Union. 8

Like the soldiers, there are countries that choose not to kill.

I wonder if the filmmakers Ethan and Joel Coen wanted to show the futility of revenge in their closing scenes of True Grit by having the fictional Miss Ross appear lonely. The girl Mattie did not regain her father, but grew up living with the consequences of her actions including the knowledge she had killed a man.

Ultimately, my conclusions are that it is unnatural for humans to kill another human; such killings lead to grief rather than release. Thus, court ordered executions present a false message that a human-driven death can resolve wrongs.

The majority of Americans want an alternative to the death penalty.9 Count me in that majority.